The Sacrifice's Secret

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. They only came when the temperature dropped below freezing and the sky was so dark that even the stars couldn’t shine through. Swirls of fire would streak across the sky and blurs of colour would shift through the darkness, making the air itself look alive. The heavy drum of their wings would travel far and wide. The sound was cruelly similar to a heartbeat, but everybody knew the dragons brought death and not life.

The citizens of Trigolion, the village in the depths of the valley, knew when the dragons were coming long before they heard the dreaded beat of their wings. They’d be warned in the morning, making sure to border up their homes and fireproof as much as they could. The village would descend into chaos, people running between families, desperately seeking friends, listening out for any scrap of news about who had received the warning - the dragon mark.

It was not only the signal that the creatures were coming but also the sign of those chosen to be sacrificed.

Bri Evergreen had never seen a dragon mark up close. She had heard about them, studied them, but never seen one in the flesh until her best friend uncurled his hand one morning and showed her what he had woken up with. An X. Carved into his hand, his blood shining up at the sky and noticeable for everybody to see. If one tried to conceal it, turning their hand over and shielding it from view, the scar would burn and the veins along the back of the hand would glow orange. No one knew how to get rid of the mark, or even if they could, but they all knew it meant goodbye. 

Some considered it a privilege.

Most considered it a curse.

On the night the dragons landed, the sacrifices would line up outside of the town hall and they would never be seen again. No one knew what happened to them, no one was allowed to watch and anyone caught snooping was killed. All that was known was to disobey a dragon mark was an act of treason. 

“It was bound to happen, Bri,” Kian whispered. “They took everybody else.” He laughed but it sounded forced and brittle, nothing like its usual bright and merry sound. By everybody else he meant his father and his brother. Both had been sacrifices before him. He shifted, his brown skin glowing in the morning sunlight, shards of gold illuminating his skin.

He reached over and squeezed her arm three times, the signal of love that they’d given each other since they were children. A lump formed in her throat, painful and cruel. He was just nineteen. Just a year or so younger than her. This wasn’t fair. This wasn’t right. 

“But Kian-”

“It’ll be fine.” He sucked in a breath. “And I’ll make sure to make some batches up for you. Before I leave. See how many vials I can make before it’s time to go.” His tone turned serious. “Keep you safe.”

Keep you safe.

Bri swallowed down the lump in her throat, a burning sensation working its way up behind her eyes as she met the concerned gaze of her best friend. 

Concern for her, not for him. 

Keep you safe.

Nearly the same words Kian’s older brother had said to her before he’d left.

Jacob had refused to show them his mark. Turning it away and welcoming the burn of pain as he hid the scar from sight. He had spent his last day with them, fitting in as much of his favourite things as he could, drinking and singing, before disappearing into the night. Before he had left he had hugged Bri tightly and whispered, “Keep him safe for me.” She remembered inhaling his scent, breathing in his warmth one last time before her eyes had begun to burn. “Swear it, Bri.”

She had.

She had sworn it there and then.

Keep him safe for me. 

In her dreams she could still feel the tickle of his voice against her ear. 

Keep. Him. Safe.

But she wasn’t going to be able to do that now. Not when Kian was following in his brother’s footsteps. 

Kian.

Her kind, sweet, intelligent best friend who was so good that instead of selfishly thinking of fun activities or things he wanted to do on his last day, he’d just stated he’d spend it making the substance she needed to stay unnoticed and unbothered. Thinking of her own safety, before even his own life.

Her eyes tracked over his face, a smile on her lips as she took in his tight, black curls, his hazel eyes, and the shadow of a beard he’d desperately been trying to grow to impress a girl in the village. He was biting his lip subconsciously like he always did when he was thinking, and the scar across his nose was much paler now in comparison to the mark on his hand. 

“You okay?” he said with a lopsided smile. 

You okay?

Her heart pulled hard in her chest. 

Those two words solidified the plan already building in Bri’s mind. She’d lost her dad, she’d lost her mum, she’d lost her grandma and she’d lost Jacob. 

Bri refused to lose Kian. 

Not him. 

“Yeah,” she whispered back, reaching over to squeeze his arm three times.

She didn’t tell him what she was going to do. She didn’t let on, knowing full well he would do everything in his power to stop her. She didn’t tell him as he made the vials of green liquid she was to keep hidden under the floorboards of Jacob’s old office. She didn’t tell him as they played in the river, kicking up water like they had when they were children and screaming as the ice-cold splashes hit their skin. She didn’t tell him when he went to lay flowers on his mother’s grave for the last time. She didn’t tell him when he hugged her, his skinny arms cutting into her body tightly as the sun dipped below the horizon. She didn’t tell him as he brushed his fingers below her chin and told her to live an amazing life. Brilliant enough for the both of them. Tears had burned in his light brown eyes, his grip slightly too tight against her jaw as he’d pressed a final kiss to her forehead. 

No. 

She still didn’t tell him. 

The dark hid her as she made her move, fleeing to Jacob’s office first before heading back towards the town square where all the other sacrifices stood. Despite the cold, sweat clung to the back of her brown hair, slipping down her back. Fear tugged at her gut but she pushed it away, focusing on the sound of her own breathing and the voice in her head.

Keep him safe for me.

Jacob’s voice.

She wouldn’t let him down. 

When she stepped out into the square, lifting her chin up proudly as she slotted into the small space beside her best friend, she heard a clock chime in the distance. A strike through the air as if her decision had changed something monumental.

It hadn’t. 

She knew that. 

If it was Kian’s fate to be a sacrifice, it was hers to follow him. 

Her best friend started, his eyes flicking towards her, running over her body as if it were a trick.

“What are you doing?” he hissed from the corner of his mouth, his gaze bouncing from her to the square and back again. 

“Fancied an adventure,” she said, a crooked smile crossing her face as she repeated Jacob’s favourite saying. Warm recognition flickered behind Kian’s hazel gaze before his eyes caught sight of her hand. His expression shuttered, horror and fierce anger rippling over his features as he realised the mistake he had been making all day. 

“You tricked me,” he whispered. 

All it had taken was a knife. Jacob’s knife. The one he kept in his desk drawer and was now stuffed down the back of her trousers. It had hurt. Her instincts telling her to stop for every painful, long second she had sunk the blade into her skin. But it was worth it. 

She’d studied Kian’s hand all day. Asked him repeatedly to see his mark, pretending she was checking to see if it had disappeared miraculously. She was surprised he hadn’t noticed something was up. Naive, wishful thinking wasn’t a normal trait of hers but then again, it wasn’t every day that you found out that your best friend was about to be ripped from you. He had probably thought that she was just in shock. And he’d probably had his own things to think about. 

But she hadn’t been wishing the mark away. 

There was no point in wishes in Trigolion. 

Instead she’d been studying it intensely, memorising the shape; the slight bend in the upper corner, the twist to the right in the centre of the palm, the lack of finesse to it. She had tried to measure its depth, memorise how the blood shone, see if there was a single thing that could give away that her own would be fake. 

In the end copying it really hadn’t been that hard. 

She wasn’t letting Kian do this alone. 

She’d keep him safe. 

“What the hell, Bri?” he hissed. Anger really didn’t suit him. 

“Like I said-”

“It’s not funny,” he snapped, his eyes darting to the sky as the drum of wings grew louder. The sound had been coming for nearly an hour, death beating against the sky like a toddler having a tantrum. 

Someone was sobbing. A sacrifice or someone being brave enough to watch them from afar. She doubted the latter. They all knew what happened to people who got caught watching.

Fire.

Death.

Pain. 

Charred bodies left out on the streets for others to pick up in the morning. Or for the dogs to eat.

The dragons weren’t just lethal creatures, they were monsters, and the humans riding them weren’t much better. 

“I’m coming with you,” she said, shrugging under his intense gaze. “That barn’s too big for just me.”

“We could be going to our deaths.”

“I know,” she said simply, her heart tugging hard in her chest.

“You still have time. Leave, now!”

“No.”

Kian grabbed her arm, the slightest of winces showing the move caused his mark to burn. “You could die.” 

She looked him in the eye, determination and sheer stubbornness pulsing through her veins. “Without you I’m already dead.”

Kian’s gaze met hers, his eyes softening a fraction. 

She’d made her decision.

His lips moved silently. Guilt and pained affection battled it out within his gaze. 

“Bri…my brother made me swear to keep you safe,” he whispered in one last attempt to get her to go. 

Tears stung the back of Bri’s eyes as a laugh tickled her throat. She smiled genuinely for the first time that day. “He made me swear it too.”

The corner of Kian’s mouth lifted fractionally and for a second he looked so much like his brother. He moved his palm from Bri’s arm down to her hand, squeezing it three times before letting go, straightening up and facing forward again. 

“Together,” she whispered. 

Kian didn’t speak. She saw him open his mouth but a quiver ran along his lips, the words halting on his tongue as emotion got in the way. Instead he stared ahead, waiting for the fate that had met his brother years before him, and his father before that. Kian, Jacob and Fiyero. All of the Canturri men.

Red, orange bursts spread across the sky and despite herself, a shiver ran up Bri’s spine. Fear dragging its fingers up her back. Noise began to fill her head like it did every time the sacrifices were made, but she pushed it away, remembering the techniques her father had taught her. Sweat beaded along her forehead.  

Without Kian’s hand to hold, she fingered the vials she managed to grab at the last moment. They were pushed deep inside of her pockets but their plastic lids offered little comfort. At least she had them with her. They’d come in handy, helping her hide from suspicion for a little longer…if they weren’t all killed right here in the square. 

As shapes began to form in the sky and the flashes of fire got bright enough to light the tips of the buildings, Bri tucked her head down. It was what they had been instructed to do as children, when the question of sacrifices had arisen in class. You weren’t allowed to look without permission. She hadn’t realised she had been clenching her jaw but the back of teeth were beginning to ache. It was pointless trying to ease the tension now, not when the dragons were so close she could hear the cries of their riders. The sounds she had heard as a child, hiding in her room, surged up louder. Unmistakable and undeniable. The voices of the dragons chiming in her head.

She pushed them away. 

To her surprise, the ground didn’t shake when the dragons landed. Their claws caught against the stone, a clatter echoing up between the houses surrounding the square, scrapes and snorts disturbing the silence, but they creatures landed with a surprising amount of elegance for such beasts. 

Bri kept her head down, staring at her feet and beginning to feel the pulse of pain running up through her hand. Adrenalin had only managed to keep it away for so long. She kept her eyes fixed upon the stone, feeling different gazes sweep over the top of her head. 

“Welcome sacrifices. You may look up, we have nothing to hide from you,” called a strong, authoritative voice. Bri looked up in time to see the speaker slide off his own dragon. He wore combat boots, dark trousers covered in mud, a black shirt and a chest plate of armour. He must have been in his early fifties, judging from the grey tickling the edges of his face. He was short and had a thick moustache that reminded Bri of the one her father had once had but his head gleamed from its lack of hair. Although he caught her attention for a second, her gaze was immediately pulled to the dragons now stood within the square. 

Six of them. 

Bigger than she had ever imagined. Towering above and staring directly at them. 

Bri’s breath caught in her throat as she stared at the one closest. It’s dark, narrow, blue snout angled towards her, its nostrils straining as if trying to pick up every scent. A hooked fang spilled out over its bottom lip and its eyes were black as night. Bri looked away, unable to hold its gaze and painful noise swarmed through her head. 

They weren’t a mixture of colours like the stories said. They were simply navy. Skin pulled across their bones, so thin it looked like it might tear at any second. Muscle lay just underneath the surface, straining as if wishing to burst free.

Their faces were different.

Some had horns reaching so far back they nearly touched their riders, gnarled and curved like a ram’s. One had spiked ridges along the plains of its face, each sharp and jagged. One had a jaw so long it resembled a crocodile whilst another appeared to be missing a part of its face, pointed teeth simply on show for everyone to see but nowhere to hide. Each held power within its body. Strength in every atom.

The man who had originally spoke stopped in front of them. He spread his arms out wide before bringing his right hand to his chest and placing it over the King’s emblem burned into his armour. 

“Welcome,” he said again. 

The word irritated Bri, her nose automatically scrunching in annoyance before she could stop it. 

Welcome?

It was their town he had just flown into. She quickly smoothed her expression.

“I am your Dragon Master and I am pleased to see you all.” The smile on his face was fake. Stuck on and feeble. His eyes continued to travel down the line, landing on Bri last. She felt her body freeze in anticipation, waiting for his gaze to move or for him to instantly label her as a fake. Instead, he simply flicked a look over his shoulder. “I count seven.” 

Behind the other six dragons flanking him Bri saw a shimmer of movement. A cloud of breath in the air that was too big for a human. She squinted, just about making out the shape of a seventh dragon. Darkness had swallowed it, shadows crawling up and masking its frame making it near impossible to see the dragon or its rider. 

“So do I,” came a voice from the shadows. It was eerily cold. As if the owner himself was made of ice.

“There should be eight,” the Dragon Master said, clicking his tongue in annoyance. 

A prickle shot up Bri’s spine. She had never thought the people coming for them would know the exact number of sacrifices. She didn’t realise they had that sort of knowledge. Kian shifted beside her, clearly thinking the same thing. She was lucky not everyone had turned up. 

“Does anyone know the person who is missing?”

A man towards the other end of the line stepped forward. Bri inhaled sharply, noting his white hair and the religious garments he was wearing. 

The village priest. 

The village priest had been marked as a sacrifice. Kian and her shared a look, shock written across her friend’s face. 

“My lord,” he said, his voice carrying just like it did every Sunday. She would hear it as she ran along the streets with Kian or on the rare days they crossed paths in the town. She was not religious, and she didn’t go to his church, but he knew her name. He’d checked in on Kian and her when Jacob had first left. He had brought them food and been the one to convince the farmer to let them live in the barn. 

He was a good man. 

But that was the point of the marks. No matter what you did you couldn’t avoid it. If you were destined to be a sacrifice, that simply was your fate. No matter if you were a good or a bad person. 

“I am not a lord,” the man said, a gruff laugh between his lips. “I am the Dragon Master.” 

For the briefest of seconds a flicker of laughter buckled in Bri’s chest. She pushed it away, horrified with herself for even thinking to laugh in a moment like this. 

…but Dragon Master. 

Really? 

He said it with such pride that it was quite ridiculous.

“Of all the pompous names,” she muttered under her breath and saw Kian roll his lips into his mouth, hiding a smile. 

Something cold swept over her, like a gust of wind in a snow storm, and she looked up instantly, her gaze pulled to the back of the shadows where the seventh dragon hid. The someone with the cold voice was watching her. Her humour died instantly in her chest and she quickly looked away.

The priest bowed his head. “My apologies, Dragon Master. The eighth person is Oliver Linwood. I was called to his side this morning. He’d taken his own life… out of fear.”

Silence as cold as ice followed his statement. Bri felt her breath try to stick inside her chest, pain curling around her heart and tugging tight. Kian shifted on the spot, swallowing as his hands curled and uncurled by his sides. 

Before even landing the dragons had caused a death. 

“How disappointing,” the man responded, shaking his head and appearing more irritated than upset. “Did this man have any children?”

“No,” the priest responded. 

“A wife?”

“No.”

“Family?”

For the first time, the calm expression on the priest’s face flickered. His jaw hardened a fraction. “He has an elderly mother. She has dementia.”

The man shook his head again, tutting loudly. “That will be no use to us.” More silence followed his sentence. It dripped down between them all. Feeling heavy and dangerous. “Where did he live?” 

A prickle ran up Bri’s spine. 

“Brookman-”

He sneered. “No, no. I have no knowledge of the names of your pathetic roads. Whereabouts? Left, right? Where?” He fired his words out angrily, impatience snapping behind every sentence. In the moonlight, Bri saw spit fly from his mouth. 

The priest pointed to his right. “In that direction, sir.”

The man smiled. “Thank you.” He clicked his fingers and the dragon closest to him looked up. 

“Rider 6 head in the direction the priest just gestured to. Count to seventy-five. Then set the first thing you see on fire.”

“No,” Bri gasped, stepping forward without even meaning to before Kian shoved her back beside him. Panic flared in her chest as her eyes danced to where the priest had gestured, her stomach jolting hard. 

No one around them seemed to have noticed her step but she felt the same gaze from earlier sweep over her once more. Dark and curious from the shadows. 

The priest stared at the man before him. “You can’t be serious.”

“It is treason to ignore your mark. People must be punished.”

“But this town did nothing wrong!” the priest said, his voice rising, pain and anger coiled behind every word. The dragon began to move, turning away from the rest of the group, its claws scratching the stone. “He was just scared!” the priest yelled desperately.

“Then your town breeds cowards.”

“You can’t do this!”

The man stepped towards the priest, amusement decorating his expression. “I can do whatever I want. Now get back in line.”

Bri felt sick. Her stomach turning over and over. If she got caught would they burn more of the town? Kian was clearly thinking the same thing as she felt his gaze catch the side of her face. But she couldn’t leave. Not now. Not knowing that then the man would have even more of a reason to burn their town as in fact it was two sacrifices who hadn’t shown up. 

“I beg of you,” the priest said, his voice soft but still managing to carry across to them. “Please. Do not do this. Oliver was a good man, a kind man. He was just scared.”

The Dragon Master sneered. “And this is his punishment.” 

The priest’s mouth trembled, his eyes never leaving the man’s own. “You mistake yourself for a God, child.” 

The Dragon Master’s arm shot forward, grabbing the priest by the neck and pulling him up by his robes. Although he was not a tall man, he was clearly strong as the priest was lifted to the tops of his feet, the toes of his shoes scrapping the stone.

“And you are no longer a priest. You’re just a sacrifice.” 

Anger whipped up inside Bri as she watched the pair of them. The priest did not move to stop the attack. He did not even lift a hand to his throat. And the man continued to squeeze, a delighted grin across his face. Her anger began to grow hot, a familiar feeling running through her veins. Kian threw her a warning glance but she couldn’t take her eyes off the priest. 

Leave him alone. 

The thought drummed through her head into her heart. Heat danced along her fingertips.

Leave him a-

“Randall, that is enough,” came the dark, cold voice. 

The Dragon Master sneered, turning towards the shadows where Bri could now just about spot a figure in the darkness. 

“You’re not my boss!” he snarled.  

“No, but your boss will be greatly disappointed if you come back with only six sacrifices.” The man’s tone lacked any kind of empathy. He sounded bored and disinterested. The Dragon Master spat against the floor, swearing under his breath as he flung the priest away from him. “I wasn’t going to kill him.”

Bri flinched as the priest fell to his knees. 

The man with the cold voice stepped forward, shadows trailing after him as if desperate to keep him for themselves. “Of course not,” he replied dryly, continuing to walk towards them. The moonlight brought him into focus as he turned his head to look at the line of sacrifices. His dark eyes swept across them. “Shall we get on with it?” 

A roar was heard to their right and Bri held back a scream as flames erupted into the sky. Rider 6 had done as he was told. Fire burned into the night, bright and dangerous. Licking up at the sky and ripping apart the darkness. Terrified shouts followed. 

Bri’s anger doubled, her rage growing as screams began to fill the night sky. Her hands curled into fists. 

“Quickly,” the new man drawled as everyone’s attention shot to the fire. His gaze remained on the sacrifices, as if fire and death were as ordinary to him as the night sky. Bri turned her anger towards him, wondering who could act so emotionless. 

The man’s eyes were too black. Unnatural so. With a pointed nose, cheekbones that could cut glass and a pale face he looked like how Bri would have personified death. He was the only one of the riders who did not wear armour. Instead he wore a velvet tunic, dark riding trousers and a cape over his shoulders. His hair was the colour of the shadows he’d been concealed by and his skin as pale as the moon.

He clicked his tongue. “Chop, chop.”

“I will do things in my own sweet time, dragonblood. Do not forget who is in charge,” the Dragon Master snapped, stepping towards him. 

Dragonblood. 

The insult ran through the air loud and clear. Even Kian flinched beside her. Whispers flared up and down the line of sacrifices, a new level of fear sinking into their bones. Bri noticed one person even took a step back. Unease churned in Bri’s gut. 

The man was one of the cursed. 

To be cursed with dragonblood was considered the worst curse anyone could endure. It was to mark a person as bad before they’d taken their first breath. It was to end someone’s life before it even began. Anyone with dragonblood was an outsider. Someone not to be trusted and not to be liked. Dangerous. A creature sent from the devil himself. 

Not many lived past a day. They were often killed for the safety of others the moment they were born. 

Their eyes were red with black slits for pupils, which they tried to hide with potions and spells. They had a heightened sense of smell and incredible hearing. They were bad luck to whoever loved them and they were considered to be the lowest of the low. People cursed with dragonblood often became homeless, unable to find jobs and kicked out by their own families. Abandoned on the streets where people swore they spat fire in the night and ate rats for food. Chaos and death followed them.

They were uncontrollable and unpredictable. 

And evil.

So evil that they were able to speak to dragons in their mind.

There were so many rumours surrounding dragonblood that Bri had never known which ones to believe. However, staring at the man in front of them, she finally understood why they were so feared. There was something ethereal about him. The way he stood and the way he walked. Something beautifully sinister. Deadly. Like staring into a lake that was iced over. Stunning until it inevitably cracked and dragged a person to their death. No wonder she had felt his gaze when she’d laughed at the Dragon Master’s title: he’d have been able to hear her as easily as if she had been stood next to him.

She swallowed, nerves ticking up inside of her.  

The man didn’t appear to care about the insult the Dragon Master had thrown at him. No pain or hurt flickered over his expression. Instead, he just rolled his eyes. 

“Now that you’ve given the game away...” He moved his palm across his eyes and the unnatural blackness was replaced with the eyes of the cursed. He didn’t so much as flinch as somebody gasped and another sob echoed out amongst the line of sacrifices. His blood red eyes stood out against his pale skin, the slit of his pupil snake like. It was terrifying to see those eyes on a child…but to see them on a fully-grown man brought a different level of terror. His eyes moved along the line, eyeing every sacrifice individually and challenging them to meet his gaze. Many ducked their heads, cowering or flinching as if his curse may be contagious from a look alone. 

When his eyes met Bri’s, she did not flinch. She did not look away. She held his gaze with cold indifference. 

She would not cower to a murderer. Not bend to a man who was part of the reason she’d had to hide her whole life.

“Bri,” Kian whispered softly but she refused to look away. To look away from the person personifying the thing she had always desperately wanted to understand.

Dragonblood was a rare curse. It was hated and feared throughout the land. People with the curse were instantly judged, instantly labelled. 

Instantly killed, because of people like him.

Murderers who did not flinch at the smell of death or wince at the sight of destruction. Killers who joined ranks with those who felt it was fine to throw a priest to the ground. Those who blamed their blood for their evilness instead of themselves.

Anger bubbled along Bri’s veins.

An adult dragonblood was rare. An impressive feat that they hadn’t been killed as a child.

But two dragonbloods. 

Two adult dragonbloods staring directly into one another’s eyes. 

That was unheard of.